At the time of the meeting of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant, in the machine tool workshop of the No. 1 Machinery Factory, which is only one wall away, a group of technicians were gathered around to study the transformation of old lathes.

In fact, as early as the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci drew many drawings of the mechanism of the original lathe. Later, many carpenters, locksmiths and watchmakers in Europe often manually built and assembled some machine tools to process parts and components according to their needs. Of course, the structure of these lathes at that time was very simple, and the production was quite simple, and many of them were made of wood, which were used to cut some wood, iron, and other things.

There is no one who has studied machinery in the traversal, and occasionally a few who know a little bit only know some concepts and general principles, such as feed boxes, lead screws, knife holders, and other things. Previously, because of the low processing accuracy requirements, for all kinds of parts and components required for mechanical products, the first machinery factory has always been to mold casting, and then use the old machine tool to slightly process it as the main production mode, the degree of mechanization is extremely low, but this is generally enough in the case of low precision requirements for parts. In addition, there is a shortage of people for other projects, so there has not been much urgency for the improvement of lathes and even machine tools.

However, in the past two years, the situation has changed somewhat, first of all, the successful development and gradual popularization of the steam engine, which made the first machine factory for the first time put forward requirements for the accuracy of processing machine tools. Later, with the help of some European craftsmen, after a collective project, the technicians of the machine tool workshop finally succeeded in developing a boring machine with an accuracy of 1-1.5 mm, which can be used to process steam engine cylinders and boring gun barrels.

For almost two years. With the deepening of industrialization. The issue of machining accuracy of parts began to be put on the agenda. Because large-scale industrial production means standardized production. This requires the processing of parts and components of all equipment and products to be of uniform size, which involves the problem of parts processing accuracy. Moreover, as machinery becomes more and more widely used, the number of parts that need to be machined also increases exponentially. In such a situation, it is neither economical nor realistic to have those skilled craftsmen who have been trained to make and process parts by hand.

As a result, the need for the First Maschinenbau to develop a machine that could automatically and accurately machine parts became more and more urgent. Finally, with the support of the special scientific research funds of the Government Council. The machine tool workshop gradually began to "modernize" the existing old hydraulic and pedal machine tools that imitated Europe.

The first one is a thread lathe. In recent years, with the gradual deepening of mechanization, whether it is military industry, shipbuilding, civilian vehicles, tools, etc., the use of threads has gradually become widespread, and the requirements for precision are also rising. In such a situation, the original method of machining threads by molds in the East Coast Republic began to fail to keep up with the requirements in terms of accuracy, and it was time-consuming, laborious, and expensive to have skilled craftsmen in factories process threads by hand. Therefore, the use of a machine that can process threads on a large scale and quickly to replace the expensive and time-consuming form of manual processing has become the unanimous call of industrial enterprises.

Under such a demand. The development team of thread lathes came into being. There are more than 10 people in this group, except for two who are traversal. Most of them are traditional locksmiths and watchmakers who immigrated from Europe and the Ming Dynasty. These people are ingenious and have a great ability to design and assemble machines by hand, because that's what they've always done. After coming to the First Machinery Factory for so many years, after continuous learning and mutual exchanges, their technical level has improved considerably. Of course, the promotion is mutual, and the promotion of the people who pass through the various techniques is not small.

In fact, although the existing pedal lathe is simple, its principle is actually not bad, and all rely on the relative distance between the moving workpiece and the tool holder to realize the turning process. In particular, after listening to the concept of modern machine tools such as mobile tool holders and feed boxes, the technicians of the research and development team gave full play to their ingenuity and took the lead in producing a wooden thread lathe at the beginning of the year.

The lathe uses a gearbox to adjust the feed rate, and uses a movable tool holder and a hard high-carbon steel cutter head for turning, and the results are not bad. To be honest, the technical content of this lathe is not much stronger than that of the original bicycle lathe, but there are more gearboxes to adjust the feed rate and movable tool holders. Therefore, after making several prototypes and handing them over to the machine shop for trial for a period of time, they improved the prototypes according to some of the problems exposed in use.

For example, the user proposed that the bed of the wooden lathe is too light, and the shaking is relatively strong during the processing process, which is easy to affect the machining accuracy. As a result, they quickly replaced the lathe bed with a cast iron one, which greatly increased its weight and made the bed hardly shake again. Other users have asked whether it is possible for the boiler shop to design and develop a dedicated steam power system specifically for these machines, instead of the traditional way of using foot pedals and water as a power source.

Although the quality of the steam engines produced in the boiler shop was extremely suspicious, there was no second supplier at the moment, and the power system still had to ask them for help. Li Hongxing is very talkative, he organized the technical personnel of the boiler workshop to start designing a universal small steam engine for lathes, and at the end of June, he produced a prototype and handed it over to the machine tool workshop for trial.

The technicians in the machine shop have made some improvements to the power part of the lathe, and have incorporated steam power to drive the machine to work at a constant rate. After eliminating one technical and mechanical failure after another, the basic model of the steam-powered thread lathe was successfully developed. The next thing to do is to produce a batch of these machines, and then hand them over to the machine shop to continue to try, and then find out the problems exposed in use one by one, and then improve them to make such lathes more perfect.

In addition to thread lathes, there is also a large demand for equipment such as woodworking lathes and sawing machines in the East Coast Republic of China. In particular, the shipbuilding industry, which is in a period of rapid development, has to process a large amount of timber every day, which consumes a lot of human resources. In the past, because the country did not have much money, the business volume of shipyards was very small, and there was generally only one ship order per year, and two shipyards had to compete for it. Therefore, shipyards have not said anything about the lack of efficient machines for processing wood. After all, the original hydraulic sawing machine they were using at the time was sufficient.

However, in the past two years, due to the large naval orders received from the Kingdom of Spain and the Ottoman Empire, coupled with the vigorous development of the domestic export economy, the maritime capacity has suddenly become tight, and the South China Sea Transportation Company has also begun to build merchant ships with the support of the Government Council, which has led to a surge in the business volume of the two shipyards and a serious shortage of manpower; Moreover, this year, with the establishment of the new Chinese colony and the discovery of extremely rich timber resources, the domestic industrial sector has naturally developed the urge to develop local high-quality hardwood resources.

As a result, the combination of these factors led to the need for advanced machines to be used in the two shipyards and the woodworking sector, which were short of manpower. For their requirements and voices, the pressure was finally transferred to the machine tool workshop of the First Machinery Factory. Soon, after the establishment of the thread lathe research and development team, the research and development team on woodworking lathes and sawing machines was also established.

The steps they develop are quite similar to those of thread lathes, that is, they are designed and trial-produced based on the existing hydraulic and foot machine tools, and then gradually improve the defects exposed in the actual use of the machine tool according to customer requirements, and then hand them over to customers for trial and then improve. And so on until a mature, usable machine is designed and produced.

A batch of woodworking lathes delivered last month to the Northern Arsenal showed satisfactory performance in trials, and the workers of the arsenal used the machines to machine a batch of spear shafts for the English. It only took a dozen minutes for a 15-foot hardwood spear shaft to be machined, and when you touched it by hand, you found that the surface was not as smooth as the hand-cut one, but it was still quite good. What's more, the cost of using a lathe to machine this spear shaft is low, and it only takes about ten minutes. This is the magic of industrial production, the cost and efficiency of which are beyond the reach of craftsmen. After machining the shaft, the technicians modified the machine a little and then began to process the wooden stock, which is still extremely efficient.

The magic of the production of large industrial machines is on full display here. Perhaps in the production of small batches, the superiority of the machine is not yet reflected. Just as the military industry of the people on the East Coast had not yet been developed, the carpenters of the arsenal had time to slowly process the butts and shafts of their guns, and at most they used some simple hydraulic and foot machinery. However, when a large number of production tasks are placed in front of you, this simple and inefficient production method is a little inadequate, and it is replaced by a model of large-scale industrial production by machines.

With these new machines, of course, there must be enough people to operate them. In fact, this problem is very easy to solve, because after the popularization of machine tools, it will inevitably make a considerable number of carpenters, blacksmiths, and coppersmiths in various factories collectively "unemployed". These people have been working in the factory since the beginning, are familiar with the factory system, and have a great understanding of the products they produce (at least the processes they are responsible for), and they are the source of ready-made machine operators.

Therefore, each factory began to train these craftsmen from this month, and led them to the machine tool production workshop of the first machinery factory to visit and study, so as to get familiar with the machine as soon as possible. One can imagine how astonishing the country's industrial production capacity, that is, the ability to create wealth, would swell when every factory in the Republic of China was equipped with "modern" machine tools. Raising the country's industrial production capacity is to enhance the country's overall strength, which is a deep-rooted and fundamental matter! (To be continued......)